Mesa Verde, CA
How exposed is Mesa Verde to wildfire?
Mesa Verde sits at the 51st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 401 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Mesa Verde at the 62nd percentile, higher than its 51st-percentile risk score, because relatively few of its buildings sit in harm's way.
Mesa Verde's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Mesa Verde (91.3% of 401 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 8.7% sit in the Direct zone.
How Mesa Verde compares
Inside California, Mesa Verde sits at just the 12th percentile even though it scores 51st nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mesa Verde ranks 15,307 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,178 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,387 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Mesa Verde and the insurance market
Because Mesa Verde is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 91.3% of Mesa Verde's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Mesa Verde's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mesa Verde's 15,307-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mesa Verde's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.